Google Chromebook Will Be Offered by Samsung, Acer in June

Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome at Google Inc., speaks during a keynote address at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Wednesday, May 11, 2011. Google Inc.'s new Chromebook line of laptops, manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co. and Acer Inc., will go on sale next month, furthering the company's push into computer hardware. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

May 11 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc.’s new Chromebook line of
laptops, manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co. and Acer Inc.,
will go on sale next month, furthering the company’s push into
computer hardware.

The laptops, which run Google’s Chrome operating system,
will be available online June 15 in the U.S., U.K., France,
Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain, with more countries
following in the coming months, Google said today on its blog.
U.S. customers can also order the devices from Amazon.com Inc.
and Best Buy Co.

Google devised Chrome to be a faster, more Internet-focused
operating system, a bid to use its Web-search leadership to
challenge Microsoft Corp.’s Windows and Apple Inc.’s Mac
software. Google, which first announced the Chrome OS in 2009,
offered a test version of laptops with the software in December.

“We think users are really ready for this,” said Sundar
Pichai, a senior vice president, during a presentation today at
Google’s developer conference in San Francisco.

The Chromebooks, which start at $349, will rely mostly on
applications delivered over the Internet. They also will be
available for businesses at a cost of $28 per month per user,
including software and support. For schools and students, the
computers will be available for $20 per month per user. The
devices rely on Intel Corp.’s Atom chip.

Google fell $7.21 to $535.45 at 4 p.m. New York time on the
Nasdaq Stock Market. Shares of the Mountain View, California-based company have declined 9.9 percent this year.